Forgiveness and the Cross

The weeks are going by very fast now and there is exactly one week left until I leave for outreach! This past week I had the amazing opportunity to have the lectures given by Cathy Nobles who is also the leader of the School of Reconciliation and Justice here on the Harpenden base. She spoke to my DTS about forgiveness and the cross. It was really interesting and made me think over a lot of things.

I'll just write out some various thoughts from the week that really stuck out to me and give a quick overview of the week! There were many quotes from this week that I found very powerful so I think I'll pass along a couple of those:
"Hope has two lovely daughters: anger and courage. Anger for what is wrong and courage to set it right."
"Unforgiveness is the poison I take hoping that you will die."
One of the topics that we looked at during the week was anger. The first quote goes well with the topic and we looked specifically at how anger is not a bad thing. It is okay to be angry as long as we use that anger constructively and don't hold on to that anger. The second quote looked at how unforgiveness not only hurts those you hold it back from but also yourself.

We also looked specifically at some different steps to forgiveness which were as followed:
1. Acknowledging the anger and hurt
2. Making a decision to forgive and not take revenge
3. Asking questions to look at the bigger picture
4. Learning to live with the bigger picture
5. Living from your best self

The last two days of the week we had the opportunity to hear from some people from Africa and hear about specific African cultures to help us prepare for our outreach. It was very interesting and eye opening. As I am leaving for South Africa next week I do not know if or how much access I will have to the internet for the next couple of months. So I will most likely be unable to post anything more on this blog for awhile. If possible though I will try and update! Thanks again to everyone who is reading these posts and your continued prayer is very much appreciated!
God Bless!